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Ontario&rsquo;s Liberal government has been planning for a while to suspend the legislature. It just needed an excuse, however bogus.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty speaks to the media after making an announcement to resign from the leadership of the Ontario provincial Liberal party at Queen's Park in Toronto on Oct. 15, 2012. Tom Walkom argues that the reasons the Liberals have so far given to suspend the legislature make no sense. (MARK BLINCH / REUTERS)

Until now, the kindest interpretation of McGuinty’s decision to suspend democracy went like this: He first decided to resign and then concluded he had to prorogue the legislature until a successor was chosen — in order to prevent his minority government from being defeated while it was effectively leaderless.

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Under this scenario, the government’s rationale — while cynical politically — was at least logical.

But if the prorogation decision came first, this theory of events makes no sense.

Neither, incidentally, does the Liberal government’s official explanation.

The official explanation is that McGuinty needs to suspend the legislature in order to make a wage-freeze deal with the province’s public sector unions.

Certainly, the Liberal government’s labour relations are in shambles.

The Liberals were trounced last month in a Kitchener-Waterloo byelection — in large part because of government attacks on teachers.

And the government’s latest effort, a draconian bill to force wage reductions on other public sector workers, has been rejected by both opposition parties.

So yes, the government did need to do something new. As the Star reported, the upshot was a secret, if rancorous, meeting last Friday between senior Liberal officials and top union leaders.

In effect, the government has concluded that the only politically viable path open to it is a negotiated wage deal.

But does such a deal require that the legislature be prorogued? The Liberals insist it does. But this explanation makes no sense.

First, most governments can walk and chew gum at the same time. Many labour deals are successfully inked when MPPs are in session.

Conversely, as the disastrous teachers’ talks last spring and summer showed, negotiations can fail when the assembly is not meeting.

Certainly there’s no evidence that the labour side wanted prorogation. Ontario Federation of Labour chief Sid Ryan came closest when he told the Star this week that, while he opposes prorogation, suspending the assembly may create new opportunities for bargaining. But even here he was alone.

“I find it offensive to prorogue,” Ken Lewenza, the influential Canadian Autoworkers president whose lobbying helped lead to last week’s labour-government summit, told me Friday.

His words echo those of Ontario Public Service Employees Union head Warren Thomas, who has called prorogation “offensive in the extreme.”

“You can certainly negotiate with government while the legislature is meeting,” Lewenza said, adding that to suggest otherwise is “absolute bulls--- . . . misleading the public.”

Second, the government faces no more political pressure now to legislate a wage freeze than it ever did. In fact, given that both opposition parties have rejected its latest attempt to do so, it faces less.

What prorogation does do is stop the bleeding. It forestalls the daily press stories focusing on government incompetence — the ORNGE ambulance scandal, the pricey power plant relocation decisions.

And the premier’s resignation announcement? Here too the timing makes sense only one way.

Had McGuinty wanted simply to renew his party and spend more time with his family, it would have been logical for him to reveal his plans either earlier (at the beginning of summer) or later (before the legislature’s scheduled three-month Christmas break).

But by announcing his resignation when he did, the premier successfully buried — for a while at least — the real story.

The real story is that this government desperately wants the legislature shut down. It just isn’t willing to give a credible reason why.

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